The Immersive Landscape Architecture Studio Designs for Food Sovereignty on the Wind River Reservation 

Landscape architecture students traveled to the Wind River Reservation to design with—not just for—the land. Through an immersive studio experience, they explored food sovereignty, water scarcity, and community-centered design firsthand. 

Each fall semester, students in the master’s program in landscape architecture at CU Denver apply classroom learning to real-world challenges. In 2025, the studio partnered with the Wind River Food Sovereignty Project in Wyoming to develop site plans and design concepts supporting their work. During this immersive studio experience, students conducted on-site research at a newly acquired 30-acre farm as it transforms into a place that strengthens food access, restores culturally significant plants, and supports education and community health through initiatives such as age-inclusive gardens, spaces for storytelling, and recreational paths.

Becoming a Food Sovereignty Hub 

The immersive landscape architecture studio introduces students to unique landscapes across the United States, extending their learning beyond the familiarity of Denver and encouraging engagement with new places, people, and community needs. In recent years, students visited the Great Basin Desert, New Orleans, the Natchez Trace Parkway, and most recently, the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. 

Plans for the studio began two years ago when Professor Jody Beck created drawings for a grant application supporting work by the Wind River Food Sovereignty Project on the Wind River Reservation, home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. Over the last two years, Beck and Lecturer and Owner of AgroEco Solutions Jenna Smith traveled to the site to get to know and support the organization, which led to their vision for the studio. Lecturer and Director of the College of Architecture and Planning’s Visual Resource Center (VRC) Jesse Kuroiwa also co-taught the seminar portion of the studio and captured photos during the studio’s trip to Wyoming. 

“The Wind River Food Sovereignty Project is an indigenous-led group. They’ve implemented a wide range of food and nutrition-based programs over the years,” said Beck, “and they recently bought a 30-acre farm that had been producing alfalfa. They are working to turn it into a food sovereignty hub, which is not just for growing culturally appropriate and desired food but also for community healing and restoration.”   

During the seminar, students participated in cultural sensitivity training led by a member of the tribe in preparation for their time in Wyoming. This gave students an opportunity to ask important questions and understand and empathize with the community for which they were designing.

“Learning their stories and tragic history on the reservation was difficult and emotional,” said Master of Landscape Architecture student Sarah Donato. “Being sensitive to this challenged us to put ourselves in their shoes and see the world through their perspective. It went beyond learning about the land, ecology, and climate, and ​​was just as important to understand their culture and traditions to make design recommendations for this project.”

The Immersive Landscape Architecture Experience 

Students explored the property and engaged with their cultural and educational centers on the reservation. They also learned about the efforts to reintroduce free roaming bison (American buffalo) to the property and attended an intergenerational healing workshop.  

“I enjoyed our time at the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative, which was one of our first visits early in our trip,” said Donato. “It was a great way to get acquainted with the tribes and learn their history firsthand. We also got to explore the land and be amongst the buffalo; an experience I’ll never forget.”

“It was in collaboration with an organization called the Tribal Buffalo Initiative, where they bring buffalo back to the land,” shared Smith. “We were able to go out and see the buffalo. We did this intergenerational trauma healing workshop, with a woman we met with in advance, to give students a sense of the historic traumas that had been endured on the reservation and to give them a sense of cultural awareness of the community there, working with them and the tie-in to food.” 

Students also met with an ethnobotanist with Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food Gathering, gaining insight into native plants traditionally used by Indigenous people for food and medicine. 

“So we had a hands-on experience being able to look at these plants and look at the habitats in which they grow. As we were talking at the ranch, there was a riparian area, and so they [the students] were paying attention to the different types of plants that they were seeing and considering what we could intentionally plant in this riparian zone,” said Smith. “The feedback I got from students is that this was one of the most valuable experiences that they had on the reservation because it gave them a sense of what the ecology of the landscape is and what things they want to be look for.”  

“Students really got into climate change and water use, including snow and rainwater harvesting,” said Beck. “There is a lot of interaction between culture, recent culture, landscape, food production, and other issues that are very complicated,” said Beck. “There’s a complicated relationship between what was the pre-contact diet for these tribes where they lived, what you can produce on this land as the climate changes, and what they want to grow for food now. So there are really rich and complicated cultural and environmental landscape issues for the students to really grapple with.” 

“I learned a lot from the Wind River Reservation about working with clients and the importance of consistent communication and relationship-building. A strong partnership makes truly amazing work possible,” said Master of Landscape Architecture Student Bob Vibert. “It was difficult to balance the practical and functional demands of a working farm with my desire to create a beautiful space for the community to visit and experience. With careful planning and reflection, however, I realized these priorities could reinforce, rather than oppose, one another.”  

Through hands-on engagement with the land and collaboration with community partners, the immersive landscape architecture studio challenged students to think beyond conventional design approaches. By grounding their work in cultural context, ecological realities, and lived experience, students gained a deeper understanding of food sovereignty and of their role as designers working in relationship with communities, rather than apart from them.